It's been a hard work week in the city, as me and my Burnistoun bro Iain Connell get prepped for heading off to the Edinburgh Fringe with Burnistoun Live at The Fringe.

It's an all-new show with all-new material, so we've been writing and rehearsing like nobody's business. We've been getting into shape by doing a bit of wrestling before each rehearsal – but all of that's escalated a bit and now we've got a cage match on Friday to settle the score.

We have great fun when we're working, Iain and I. I think he probably really loves my sense of humour and impish behaviour. I like to keep morale up by making things as jolly as possible. Here I am playing a brilliant prank on him, to keep things light during a hard writing session.

When I have a week like this, one that I would describe as 'hard work', I always think about my da. My da was a hard-working man, a roofer, and he'd be out the door at six in the morning and home about six at night. He'd go out clean as a whistle, with his big boots and his big tea can, and he'd come back all covered in dirt.

He'd wash up before dinner, eat, and then we'd watch something like Doctor Who or Star Trek together, and he'd fall asleep. Then he'd wake up, read the paper, do the dishes, play Subbuteo with me, watch some telly, bleed a radiator, pick out some horses, read a book, and then he'd be watching more telly when I went to bed. And then, somehow, he'd be back up at six in the morning again, and off out to work.

He'd be off out in the rain, in the snow, in the freezing cold. If a volcano had erupted in Sauchiehall Street overnight, my da would still have got to work somehow, and used the lava to boil the tea in his big battered tea can.

My da worked on roofs all over Glasgow and beyond. He worked on the roofs of factories, hospitals, offices, abattoirs. He did it for decades, and waking up early was just how he lived. In all my years of knowing my da, I never knew him to have a lie-in. Whenever I'd get up, he'd always be up before me, leaning on the kitchen worktop by the window, watching the birds and squirrels in the garden.

With a da like that, and uncles who were hard-working roofers too, and a brother and brother-in law who were the same – it always felt a bit strange to have the goal of being a writer. A writer was all I ever wanted to be, and my da encouraged that dream by making sure that I would read. He'd constantly be giving me books. They were always smart books. Books that would expand my mind, or expand my vocabulary.

He'd read books about science, about the formation of black holes, and he'd give me those to read so we could discuss them. He gave me Pirsig's Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. We read Umberto Eco. We discussed a vast amount of esoteric things, and I'd go to bed with my imagination on fire, and he'd be up at six to go up on the roofs.

My ma and my aunties would always tell me about how clever my da was, and about the academic opportunities he had when he was young. It was a different time, though, and my da simply had to work. His own parents weren't wealthy people. My da told me a story about how his own father, who had a beautiful singing voice, would go singing round the back courts of tenements, and people would throw money out of the windows.

The image of this really stuck with me – I thought it was a beautiful thing for a father to do. And it also encouraged me in my writing, in its own way. When I was struggling to make ends meet for many years, writing jokes and short sketches for this show and that show, scratching out a living, I'd tell myself that it was just like singing round the back courts and gathering up pennies. It helped make it feel honourable.

It was a long time before writing even felt like a real job to me. I'm proud to say that Greg Hemphill is a friend of mine, one of the loveliest men you could ever hope to meet. But even before we were friends, Greg and Ford Kiernan were hugely significant people in my life, because it was only when my name appeared in the end credits of Chewin' The Fat that I actually felt I was doing something real. It was the first time I felt like I was actually up on the roofs.

So I think about my da on weeks like this. When I get stressed out, or tired, I think about him waking up at six and coming home 12 hours later. I think about how lucky I am to be making a living thinking up daft jokes with my pal. It makes me sad that my da never got the chance to see me perform any comedy live, because I like to think that maybe he would have seen the connection between his old man, himself and me. From singing round the backs to doing daft voices up on the stage, and all those hundreds of roofs between the two, bridging the gap across the years, tiled and sheeted by the cleverest guy of the three.

I'll see you in the city.

(Before I go, a shoutout to the Springburn Park Festival. I attended with my wee lassie on Sunday, and despite the rain it was a nice wee day. I hope it keeps coming back year after year, and that it grows bigger and bigger. Oh, and the Brass, Aye? Band were there, and they were fantastic. )